Archive Photos/Moviepix/Getty ImagesIn 2026, teenage girls have more options when it comes to horror movies than ever before. Most recently, Forbidden Fruits was made specifically for this once-underserved demographic, as I noted in Inverse’s review of the film. But a decade before “girl horror” was a twinkle in Diablo Cody’s eye, one horror movie reigned supreme in the hearts of witchy teenage girls everywhere. The Craft was released on May 3, 1996, and met with indifferent reviews from mostly male reviewers. It was a sleeper hit at the box office, however, building a cult following that only grew after it was released on VHS and DVD in the summer of 1997. That’s how I first encountered The Craft, at a slumber party in the late ‘90s where we tried playing “light as a feather, stiff as a board” after watching the film. Nobody floated a couple of feet off the ground, like Rochelle (Rachel True) did in the movie, but I could have sworn that I felt my friend’s body getting lighter as we continued to chant. Were my fingers just going numb? Probably. But it was magical nonetheless. That’s one of the things that make The Craft so special: Just as the film’s slumber-party sequence — which also contains a famous moment where Robin Tunney’s character, Sarah, changes her hair color from auburn red to blonde using glamour magic — inspired us to re-create what we saw on screen, the rituals depicted in the film functioned as a how-to for aspiring witches as well. Through a friend who owned an occult store — Lirio’s Occult Shop in downtown L.A., where the girls are seen browsing in several scenes — director Andrew Fleming asked Dianic Priestess Pat Devin to help with the movie’s magical elements; as a former teen witch herself, she agreed. Thanks to Devin’s involvement, The Craft is actually a pretty accurate depiction of what Wiccan spells and ceremonies looked like in the mid-’90s, with one big exception: Mannon is not a real Wiccan deity. (Devin has said that she didn’t want “hordes of teenagers running down to the beach or out to the woods invoking anybody real.")All sleepovers end this way. | Peter Iovino/Columbia/Kobal/ShutterstockIn the early days of the internet, this information was much harder to find, particularly in smaller cities and towns that weren’t lucky enough to have their own occult emporiums. That added a layer of fascination to the film, although inspiring wannabe Goth girls to live their spookiest lives wasn’t the only thing that drew teenage viewers to the film. Another lifeline that The Craft threw to its young viewers was its depiction of a painful rite of passage experienced by many teenagers, even those who weren’t into witchcraft: the friend-group breakup. Although most high-school mean girls don’t have the destructive powers of coven leader Nancy (Fairuza Balk), it can feel that way when your friends decide that they don’t like you all of a sudden, grounding the film’s supernatural horror plot in real-world emotions. There’s a reason why multiple generations of teenagers have related to these characters: When you feel different from your peers, the friends you do have are everything. And if that goes away, it feels as dramatic as the climax of this movie looks. Rachel True in 2023. | Arnold Turner/Getty Images Entertainment/Getty ImagesThe character of Rochelle has been especially influential. Although she was excluded from publicity for the film back in 1996, Rachel True’s depiction of a young Black witch coming into her powers — and her openness about her experiences as an actor facing racism in Hollywood — have made her an icon among witches and horror fans of color. A real-life practitioner, she even released her own Tarot deck, True Heart Intuitive Tarot, in 2020. It all combines to give The Craft an air of magic, something that many witch-themed movies and TV series since then have tried to recapture. Occasionally, they succeed. But if you want a movie that the whole coven can enjoy, there’s still nothing like The Craft. The Craft is available to rent on Prime Video and other digital platforms.